1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to soft drinks; and more particularly to soft drinks packaged in containers.
2. Related Arts
Packaged soft drinks are typically marked with dates within which the soft drinks must be sold to guaranty freshness. These dates, e.g., best-before-date, use-by-date, etc., are critical for both manufacturers and sellers. Soft drinks, once prepared and canned/bottled have no optional shelf life control. Normally, the shelf life of soft drinks is predicted for specific storage ambient conditions. Canning or bottling of the soft drink in a container (of a certain material) helps to maintain the freshness of the soft drink, but only for the specified time. Container material development that may extend the shelf life of soft drinks is challenging.
Apart from the requirement of the suitable container material, maintaining storage conditions, e.g., temperature, humidity level, etc. are additional burdens on the manufacturers, distributors, and sellers of soft drinks. Deterioration during storage has serious impact on the quality of soft drink and improper storage may shorten the specified best-before-date or use-by-date specified by their manufacturers.
Flavoring, added to a soft drink base, e.g., carbonated water, causes the soft drink to have its unique flavor. The flavoring of the soft drink, unfortunately, degrades over time resulting in a tasteless, odorless, or unpleasant tasting soft drink. Carbonation can also be lost over time, resulting in flat soft drink. Any of these conditions will cause users to avoid the particular soft drink, brand of soft drink, or seller of the soft drink.
Currently the soft drinks are canned/bottled by their manufacturers. The manufacturing process includes fully incorporating all the ingredients resulting in the soft drinks ready to consume. Consumers have no choice or freedom of buying soft drinks of flavor other than what is available from the shop. Once soft drinks are canned or bottled the manufacturers do not have any control on further adding ingredients to attribute new flavor/taste or to rejuvenate for the degradation due to bio-chemical reactions inside the can or bottle. As consumers are often cautious towards health, salt and sugar content is critical. Current canning or bottling approaches do not provide any freedom for the consumer to control the saltiness or the sweetness levels of the soft drinks. Also the likes and dislikes of tastes and flavor differ from one location to other location and from country to country. The present way of delivering soft drinks does not meet the requirement of geographic dependence of liking on the taste and flavor by the consumers.
Some of the ingredients that are added during the manufacturing process either as preservatives or as flavor agents will react slowly with the container material developing an offensive odor. Also if the quality of the preservative degrades with time, some of the ingredients develop bacterial growth. In such cases the soft drinks under storage in the can or bottle may turn toxic over sufficiently long period of time resulting in poisoning effect.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art through comparison of such systems with the present invention.